I saw it, and I really hope nobody's given him flak for being sexist as a result of that.
I'm not gonna bother seeing the new Ghostbusters, but I did swing on by IMDB and take a look at the quotes page for the movie. After reading the whole thing, I have no trouble believing anybody who says this movie is unfunny and sucky. Not a single quote made me laugh or even smile, and some of them made me cringe. ("The power of Patty compels you!" Really? Somebody actually wrote that and thought it'd be funny and original after decades of people making similar Exorcist references?) I guess some of them might be funny with the right delivery, but the actors shouldn't need to be saving lame jokes.
The "submarine for fish" line isn't terrible, but my reaction to it is more "Huh, never really thought of it like that before, although unlike a submarine, an aquarium usually stays in one spot..." than "OMG LOLLLL!"
I also found out about ComicBookGirl19, who isn't as well-known but who recently posted a pretty good summary of the whole kerfuffle:
(I really hope they don't remake Back To The Future. I saw the original Ghostbusters when I was a kid and I liked it, but it wasn't among my favourite movies or anything. The BTTF trilogy, however, are among my favourites, and if they do a sucky reboot of that I won't be happy.)
Maybe it is, and maybe I shouldn't complain about a movie I haven't seen even the first ten minutes of. But when you make a new version of something that was really well-received, the bar is set very high. Maybe if the original never existed and this was the first Ghostbusters film ever, it wouldn't be compared to it and wouldn't be judged as harshly by some people.
(I really hope they don't remake Back To The Future. I saw the original Ghostbusters when I was a kid and I liked it, but it wasn't among my favourite movies or anything. The BTTF trilogy, however, are among my favourites, and if they do a sucky reboot of that I won't be happy.)
Universal's going through its stash of old IPs (in addition to things like Jurassic World, look at the corpses their stablemate NBC is dragging out or has verged on dragging out), it wouldn't surprise me if doing something with BTTF was on the table
I wonder if they'll make a point of replacing Marty with a female character so that they can similarly push the narrative that anybody who dislikes the movie for any reason must be a misogynist. One of the dumber articles I saw about Rolfe talked about "soft sexism" which is, if I understood correctly, the idea that "Maybe he doesn't think he refuses to see the movie because it stars women, but deep down that's the real reason he refuses to see the movie." It was baseless speculation.
You can be a sexist nitwit and use superficially non-sexist language about it. Whether or not this is true of Rolfe, I cannot say, because I am unfamiliar with his work; I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say that you are probably right here. But that doesn't make it not a thing,
I wonder if they'll make a point of replacing Marty with a female character so that they can similarly push the narrative that anybody who dislikes the movie for any reason must be a misogynist. One of the dumber articles I saw about Rolfe talked about "soft sexism" which is, if I understood correctly, the idea that "Maybe he doesn't think he refuses to see the movie because it stars women, but deep down that's the real reason he refuses to see the movie." It was baseless speculation.
That's absolutely a thing that happens.
On the other hand when one side is violently attacking a movie for very obviously sexist reasons it's easy for genuine criticism to get jumbled up in the discussion, because again, it's a heated issue. People were like this about Fury Road too.
But, another thing is that filmmakers don't have a reason to care about what people actually think of their movie. I really doubt remaking old 80s IPs with female actors is part of some plot to artificially drive up rating scores. Everything I've seen about the movie indicates that it's just divisive and consists of a particular kind of humor that does not necessarily connect with everyone. Worse still it's against an original that a lot of people consider a classic (for some reason, the original Ghostbusters is actually one of the few cultural touchstone movies I have seen and I think it's not very good but w/e we're not talking about my opinions here).
Also! Having a strongly negative opinion about something you haven't seen is just kind of dumb. I mean it's your right to not watch whatever you don't want to, but then complaining about it? Is also a little far.
@Sredni: I get that not everybody who's sexist is gonna be really blatant about it. The thing that annoyed me, though, was how certain people were positive that sexism was among the reasons Rolfe made the "No review" video, and were not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at all.
@Jane: I suppose I should reserve judgment on the movie itself. I'm not somebody who watches a ton of movies, though (hell, I still haven't even seen The Force Awakens or Age Of Ultron, despite both of those being on my to-do list), and if reviews of a particular movie are mixed, then that doesn't make me want to check it out.
Something I have seen, though, is people who strike me as decent getting mercilessly attacked and tarred with the sexist label when they really don't deserve it (at least not as far as I know), and that upsets me. In Angry Joe's case, this is a guy who made a point of defending Anita Sarkeesian, so I have a really hard time believing that he's actually a misogynist, or that he became one at some point after talking about Sarkeesian.
Somewhere, a very out of touch MRA youtuber accidentally saw the original movie instead, and is going to talk about how the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man clearly represents the Cucked White Male in modern America
Somewhere, a very out of touch MRA youtuber accidentally saw the original movie instead, and is going to talk about how the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man clearly represents the Cucked White Male in modern America
(I really hope they don't remake Back To The Future. I saw the original Ghostbusters when I was a kid and I liked it, but it wasn't among my favourite movies or anything. The BTTF trilogy, however, are among my favourites, and if they do a sucky reboot of that I won't be happy.)
Universal's going through its stash of old IPs (in addition to things like Jurassic World, look at the corpses their stablemate NBC is dragging out or has verged on dragging out), it wouldn't surprise me if doing something with BTTF was on the table
Universal really dropped the ball by not making a BTTF remake in time for a 2015 release date.
@Sredni: I get that not everybody who's sexist is gonna be really blatant about it. The thing that annoyed me, though, was how certain people were positive that sexism was among the reasons Rolfe made the "No review" video, and were not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at all.
James Rolfe certainly wasn't even close to the worst, and no one said he was, but consider that he made no such video for Jurassic World or Terminator: Genisys
Or The Amazing Spider-Man (nor will he do so for Homecoming) or any number of Marvel movies
@Sredni: I get that not everybody who's sexist is gonna be really blatant about it. The thing that annoyed me, though, was how certain people were positive that sexism was among the reasons Rolfe made the "No review" video, and were not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at all.
James Rolfe certainly wasn't even close to the worst, and no one said he was, but consider that he made no such video for Jurassic World or Terminator: Genisys
Or The Amazing Spider-Man (nor will he do so for Homecoming) or any number of Marvel movies
Okay, first of all I don't much care for the way you're taking a dig at him by saying he "isn't the worst", implying that he's still one of the bad ones. You have no way of knowing that.
Second of all, two of those movies you mentioned were not reboots of the whole goddamn franchise, and the Spider-Man movies didn't start coming out until after James turned 20. From all I've heard, the Amazing Spider-Man movies have been worse than even Spider-Man 3, but that fact did not repel me the same way that a BTTF remake would, because the first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man came out when I was an adult.
For that matter, as somebody who's only a few years older than James, I understand why he'd care more about Ghostbusters than about Terminator, the Jurassic Park films, or Spider-Man. If he was anything like me, he didn't start seeing R-rated movies like Terminator until he was in or close to his teens, and the first Jurassic Park film came out when he was 13. If he was like me, then he saw Ghostbusters while he was still a little kid, because that movie was PG and came out in 1984.
It's the same reason why people my age get so pissed off about the Star Wars prequels; not JUST because they're inferior, but because we fucking grew up with the Star Wars OT.
Speaking of which: if he were the sexist you seem to think he is, then he would have loathed The Force Awakens because of Rey. Which he absolutely did not. In fact, he cited it as an example of doing things right.
Look, I'm very pointedly NOT going to respond to a lot of that and merely ask you consider that you're being REALLY defensive and as such making rather thoroughly baseless assumptions about my relatively mild opinions on the subject, so I'll restate it as thoroughly as I can
Like my opinion? It was a stupid move on his part. Thoughtless. And eminently risible. But not a huge deal. He's clearly not followed a lot of the Discourse on the film because he's a smart enough guy to not touch that shit if he's aware it's gotten ugly, or at least I hope so because I'm a huge fan of his. Either way, it's important to understand one's own cognitive biases, and why they may be the reason why Ghostbusters seemed like an egregious cash grab to him while ANY number of other reboots, sequels, and eighties tributes (think The Expendables, which he loved) didn't register as inherently tainted ground quite like this one did.
I don't think HE'S sexist, but I think the basis of this relatively benign film registering, to him, as cynical while those other ones didn't, is subconscious sexist biases. Which isn't nearly as armchair psychologist as it sounds like, because it's ultimately the base assumption of any "this video expresses a sexist viewpoint" statement
Okay, if there could be no more blowing up a mild opinion into something way more then it is, alongside inevitable confrontational arguing, that'd be nice.
At least bother to figure out where people are coming from before jumping the gun and more.
So done with Jacob Chapman. Cargo cult nerd criticism, is really mean and spiteful to people who disagree with him on stuff, and thinks it's okay to call people spergs. I realize he's had a tough time, but ugh.
Between my sister and I, my family probably appreciated all two of Fox Animation's movies more than most households ever did. She loved Anastasia (and still does), and I still consider Titan A.E. to be an underrated cult classic despite its flaws.
I don't think this was as good as the one before it ("Paperboy"), partly because a lot of his current fanbase are too young to have watched "Beavis & Butthead" and won't get a lot of the references. For example, I checked the TV Tropes page for CMOF/Funny Moments, and one person put that the Nerd was talking like he was drunk late in the review. Well, no, he wasn't drunk, the joke was that he was reviewing the game in the same dumbass way that Beavis & Butthead used to review music videos.
Between my sister and I, my family probably appreciated all two of Fox Animation's movies more than most households ever did. She loved Anastasia (and still does), and I still consider Titan A.E. to be an underrated cult classic despite its flaws.
I enjoyed Titan A.E. and even now the animation looks pretty great, but I haven't seen it in full in years and years.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
I find it kinda funny how I started watching Phelous back when he did mostly horror movies but over the past two years or so he's switched almost entirely to Disney knockoffs and that's so much more my thing
Comments
Online critics tend to embody the worst aspects of Internet culture.
If you're not going to contribute meaningfully to the conversation on that front, you will be defenestrated post-haste.
I like Angry Joe and Jim Sterling, off the top of my head, at least for games. Anyone saw Joe's Ghostbusters review yet?
I'm flabbergasted at how people can have such different opinions on it
It's just that Ramis and his retinue are beloved to a degree that Feig and his retinue haven't had time to earn yet.
^ James Rolfe, the Angry Video Game Nerd.
Or The Amazing Spider-Man (nor will he do so for Homecoming) or any number of Marvel movies
Like my opinion? It was a stupid move on his part. Thoughtless. And eminently risible. But not a huge deal. He's clearly not followed a lot of the Discourse on the film because he's a smart enough guy to not touch that shit if he's aware it's gotten ugly, or at least I hope so because I'm a huge fan of his. Either way, it's important to understand one's own cognitive biases, and why they may be the reason why Ghostbusters seemed like an egregious cash grab to him while ANY number of other reboots, sequels, and eighties tributes (think The Expendables, which he loved) didn't register as inherently tainted ground quite like this one did.
I don't think HE'S sexist, but I think the basis of this relatively benign film registering, to him, as cynical while those other ones didn't, is subconscious sexist biases. Which isn't nearly as armchair psychologist as it sounds like, because it's ultimately the base assumption of any "this video expresses a sexist viewpoint" statement
At least bother to figure out where people are coming from before jumping the gun and more.